The Irish Independent is the flagship publication of Independent News & Media (INM) and Ireland's largest-selling daily newspaper. It habitually includes glossy magazines.[1] Aside from its anglophone material, the Independent also publishes a weekly supplement in the Irish language called Seachtain.

It is a sister of the broadsheet Sunday Independent. The Irish Independent is available on the Irish Newspaper Archives website up to 2004 you will only find "Black-And-White" microfilm pages but since 2005 the pages of the Irish Independent online in colour.

Since May 2012, the Irish Independent has been controlled by billionaire Denis O'Brien after O'Brien acquired a majority shareholding of parent company. In January 2008, at the same time as completing the purchase Today FM (Ireland's last national radio station independent of O'Brien and state broadcaster RTÉ), O'Brien increased his INM shareholding to become that company's second-biggest shareholder behind Tony O'Reilly, whom he ousted just over four years later.[2] Traditionally a broadsheet newspaper, it introduced an additional compact size in 2004 and in December 2012 (following O'Brien's takeover) it was announced that the newspaper would become compact only.[3]

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The Irish Independent was formed in 1905 as the direct successor to the Daily Irish Independent, an 1890s pro-Parnellite newspaper, and was launched by William Martin Murphy, a controversial Irish nationalist businessman, staunch anti-Parnellite and fellow townsman of Parnell's most venomous opponent, Bantry's Timothy Michael Healy.[4]

During the 1913 Lockout of workers, in which Murphy was the leading figure among the employers, the Irish Independent vigorously sided with its owner's interests, publishing news reports and opinion pieces hostile to the strikers, expressing confidence in the unions' defeat and launching personal attacks on the leader of the strikers, James Larkin. The Irish Independent described the 1916 Easter Rising as "insane and criminal" and famously called for the shooting of its leaders.[5] In December 1919, during the Irish War of Independence, a group of twenty IRA men destroyed the printing works of the paper, angered at its criticism of the Irish Republican Army's attacks on members of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and British government officials.[6] In 1924, the traditional nationalist newspaper, the Freeman's Journal, merged with the Irish Independent. Until October 1986 the paper's masthead over the editorial contained the words "incorporating the Freeman's Journal".[7]

For most of its history, the Irish Independent (also called simply the Independent or, more colloquially, the Indo) was seen as a nationalist, Catholic, anti-Communist, newspaper,[8] which gave its political allegiance to the Pro-Treaty party Cumann na nGaedheal and later its successor party, Fine Gael.[8] During the Spanish Civil War, the Irish Independent's coverage was strongly pro-Franco; the paper criticized the De Valera government for not intervening on behalf of the Spanish Nationalists.[9]

In the 1970s, it was taken over by former Heinz chairman Tony O'Reilly. Under his leadership, it became a more populist, market liberal newspaper—populist on social issues, but economically right-wing. By the mid-nineties its allegiance to Fine Gael had ended. In the 1997 general election, it endorsed Fianna Fáil under a front page editorial, entitled "It's Payback Time". While it suggested its headline referred to the fact that the election offered a chance to "pay back" politicians for their failings, its opponents suggested that the "payback" actually referred to its chance to get revenge for the refusal of the Rainbow Coalition to award the company a mobile phone licence.[10]

In late 2004, Independent Newspapers moved from their traditional home in Middle Abbey Street to a new office, "Independent House" in Talbot Street, with the printing facilities already relocated to the Citywest business park near Tallaght.

On 27 September 2005, a fortnight after the paper published its centenary edition, it was announced that editor Vinnie Doyle would step down after 24 years in the position. He was replaced by Gerry O'Regan, who had until then been editor of the Irish Independent's sister paper, the Evening Herald. The newspaper's previous editor Stephen Rae was also formerly editor of the Evening Herald and was appointed editor in September 2012. Fionnan Sheahan was appointed editor in January 2015.[11]

Denis O'Brien successfully acquired a majority shareholding the newspaper parent company INM in May 2012.

Since 2011, the Irish Independent has been the home of New Irish Writing (and its associated Hennessy Award),[12] which was originally established by David Marcus in 1969 in the Irish Press and appeared in the Sunday Tribune from 1988 to 2011. The New Irish Writing Page is "the longest-running creative writing feature of its kind in any Irish or British newspaper".[13][14]

The Irish Independent, in cooperation with the Institute of Education, produces Exam Brief, a yearly six-part supplement dedicated to preparation for Leaving and Junior Certificate exams.[15] This supplement is published in February, March and April each year.

Excluding The Sun and the Daily Mirror, most of the content of which are produced in the United Kingdom, the Independent Group owns just over 67% of Irish daily newspapers.[16] INM-owned or partly owned titles have 58% of the newspaper market on Sunday.[citation needed] With the closure of the Evening Press, the Independent's Evening Herald is now the only Irish national evening newspaper. Another sister paper is the Sunday Independent.

The Independent News and Media Group had a major share in the Sunday Tribune, a Sunday broadsheet before its closure in 2011.

The Independent News & Media Group has been accused of holding an "unhealthy dominance" of the Irish newspaper market,[17] all the more so since the demise of the Irish Press, Evening Press and Sunday Press newspapers published by the Irish Press Group in 1995.

The Independent News and Media Group also owns online business directory site Your Local that provides local business information on approximately 100,000 Irish businesses.

^"Following a report on the assassination of the Lord Lieutenant...the IRA attacked the offices of the (Irish Independent) the following day." Ian Kenneally, The Paper Wall: Newspapers and Propaganda in Ireland 1919-1921. Dublin, Collins Press. 2008, ISBN 1905172583 (p.105).